Monday, April 29, 2013
Motivating Students
Motivating students can be tricky. Teachers want to positively motivate the students to learn, but too many rewards are not good for any age. If you offer students too many rewards they don't learn to enjoy school simply for the joy of learning. Learning can be made fun and should be encouraged even when there is not an external reward. Children need to learn that learning in it's self is it's own reward. Giving rewards to often can also cause the students to only work if they are going to get rewarded. I have found that the younger students need more positive reinforcement and more external motivation. I feel like we live in age that offers too many choices and far too many rewards for students just to try and get simple things accomplished. Not every behavior or action should be rewarded. Students need to learn that there are expected behaviors that are required simply because they make the world a safer and more productive place. Finding the fine line line between extrnal motivation can certainly be hard.
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I am in a high school and motivation is just as big of a problem as the younger students. I get the question "how will I use this in life?" In the government class we are studying the Constitution and I tell them all the time that if you don't know your rights it is really easy to take them away. If students ask why World War I policies matter, I tell them that some of them will be in the Middle East soon in the military and it is good to know how that area was shaped by WWI policies and why there is such animosity towards the U.S. Of course after this statement they ask me what "animosity" means and I wonder how juniors in high school can have such a limited vocabulary. Anyway, at the high school level, one of the best motivators that I have found is making the lesson relevant to the students lives so they will be interested.
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